CVS: additional DoS and arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities

1.  Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Version Information

Related bugreports: #53408

Synopsis

Several serious new vulnerabilities have been found in CVS, which may allow an attacker to remotely compromise a CVS server.

2.  Impact Information

Background

CVS (Concurrent Versions System) is an open-source network-transparent version control system. It contains both a client utility and a server.

Description

A team audit of the CVS source code performed by Stefan Esser and Sebastian Krahmer resulted in the discovery of several remotely exploitable vulnerabilities including:

• no-null-termination of "Entry" lines
• error_prog_name "double-free()"
• Argument integer overflow
• serve_notify() out of bounds writes

Impact

An attacker could use these vulnerabilities to cause a Denial of Service or execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running cvs.

3.  Resolution Information

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time. All users are advised to upgrade to the latest available version of CVS.

Resolution

All CVS users should upgrade to the latest stable version:

# emerge sync
# emerge -pv ">=dev-util/cvs-1.11.17"
# emerge ">=dev-util/cvs-1.11.17"

4.  References

• E-matters Advisory 09/2004
• CAN-2004-0414
• CAN-2004-0416
• CAN-2004-0417
• CAN-2004-0418